Massachusetts Turtles
by a-big-apple
Summary: An epic gift-fic, re-written without the Mary Sues. What if the comic Pete and Kevin created was based on truth? Turtles in the real world, Don's crazy inventions, an old enemy come back to haunt, and lots of time travel. You should check it out.
1. Prologue

Here it is, the epic gift fic I wrote for my roomie. It took me a year to finish, and it's upwards of 25 chapters long....but it's a complete and utter Mary Sue. So, I'm going to re-work it, taking out the Mary Sue characters and leaving in the Turtley goodness! Here's the Prologue, which I actually didn't have to change at all. :)

Disclaimer: The Turtles are certainly not mine. (But damn, I wish I'd thought of it first.)

Part One: Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Prologue

~July 2006 – 3:18am~

"Ugh." Michelangelo leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles. In front of him, the cursor blinked, unstoppably, on the white expanse of his laptop screen. It was time to face facts—writer's block had claimed him again. "I don't know why the hell I said I could be done by June," he muttered, standing up and stretching with a sudden chorus of cracking joints. "Maybe it's time for a walk. Whaddya think, Klink?" The little orange kitten opened one eye to peer at him, then buried herself deeper under the blankets of Mike's empty bed. Mike scratched the kitten briefly between the ears and slipped out of the house with a stealth that, after practicing it all his life, was now as automatic as breathing.

The turtle stepped out onto the porch, touching the banister of the stairs lightly to get his bearings in the blackness. With the lights inside the house turned off, the grounds were a pitch-dark expanse opening in every direction around him, with only the moon and the hundreds of stars above him for guidance—one of the advantages of living on an old farm in the middle of the Massachusetts woods. As his eyes adjusted, he realized that there was a faint glow of artificial light from behind the house. _The barn,_ he thought. _Don's still working, too. I guess I shouldn't be surprised!_ He slipped out into the grass, damp from that afternoon's rain, and strolled out to the old barn to check up on his restless older brother.

He wasn't expecting to hear any signs of life, since Donatello had soundproofed the barn, but as he approached Michelangelo's instincts told him that something was wrong. He heard…water? Certainly not the creek that ran through their property, it sounded more like a watering can, a single stream….

Then he heard the distinct _zzzzip!_ of a fly being done up. _What the hell!?_ In the dim light from the high barn windows he could finally make out a figure, small and stocky, and clearly male. He registered a neatly pulled-back ponytail of dark hair and, of all things, a button-up shirt and tie. For a moment he hesitated, thrown off; this stranger looked too tidy and well kempt to be one of the homeless wanderers that sometimes strayed onto their property looking for shelter. And then the stranger, having finished his business, started to walk to the door of the barn.

_Oh, _hell_ no,_ he thought to himself. Images flashed through his mind of all the terrible things his oldest brother always predicted in lectures about keeping them hidden. Scientific experimentation, dissection…he leapt forward without another thought, counting on the darkness and the surprise attack to conceal his appearance from the stranger. He aimed a kick at the figure's retreating back, but just as he was about to land it, the man whipped around, and his foot skidded along something hard and rounded beneath the shirt. _What the…?_ Before Mike could recover his balance, a hand struck his plastron and he stumbled back. A leg stuck out behind his own tripped him and sent him sprawling, but he reached out as he fell and grabbed the stranger's tie, pulling him along. There was a dull thud as Mike's carapace connected with the grass, and then a louder one as something hard hit his plastron. _What is going on with this guy?_

"What on Earth…. Mikey?"

For a moment, Michelangelo thought his brother had heard the commotion and come out of the barn to help him. Then he realized, with a sudden jolt, that it was the stranger, speaking with Donatello's voice. "Don…?"

The imposter got to his feet with a moan. "Oh, hell." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, pager-like device and pressed a few buttons on it. All at once the stranger disappeared, and in his place stood Donatello, missing his gear and mask, his stance tired. "It was a hologram," he said in a hushed voice, cutting off Mike's inevitable question.

Mike stared at him, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open, still sprawled on the ground. "That's…that's incredible! Don! You're a genius!"

For a moment Don smiled warmly down at his brother; then he sighed, offering a hand to help him up. "Yes, well…you've caught me red-handed. Come on in the barn, I'll show you what I've been working on." Don's face hardened a little. "But you have to promise me you're not going to tell Leo. Or Sensei. Or Raph, for that matter."

Michelangelo returned his brother's serious look, considering. "So, I guess I also shouldn't tell them about how you just took a leak on Master Splinter's Morning Glories?"

"What? I didn't…. Oh, hell."

~10:21am~

"That's not where they usually are—they moved!"

"It's a creeper plant, Donnie. Of course they moved."

Raphael and Leonardo exchanged glances across the kitchen table as their brothers wandered down for breakfast. _You know what they're talking about?_ asked Leo's raised eyebrow.

_Not a clue_, answered Raph's bemused smile over the top of his coffee.

"Maybe Sensei's training them to be ninjas," Mike suggested, with a wicked grin that his brothers could hear in his voice. "You know, the art of invisibility and all—"

"Bite me, Michelangelo."

"You'd better watch it the next time your bladder's full, or the _flowers_ might bite you!"

Don strode into the room with a long-suffering sigh, his eyes half-closed in irritation and weariness. He headed straight for the coffeepot.

"Mornin'!" Mikey followed with a grin for his brothers, and headed straight for the fridge.

Leonardo took a sip of his tea. _I don't think I want to know._

~Several months later – 4:41am~

"Aww, but I don't want to be Japanese."

Donatello frowned, looking up from his worktable as his younger brother preened in front of the mirror. "Mike, if we're going to use the Hamato name, we have to make the holograms fit it. And we have to at least resemble each other, if we're going to tell people we're brothers. It's risky enough to use our real names as it is—this isn't some fanfiction where you can look however you want and nobody notices."

"But—"

"Mikey," Don cut in forcefully. "Just imagine what would happen if we got caught. If someone figured it out. I mean, repercussions in the wider world aside, can you imagine just how badly Leo would mangle us both?"

Michelangelo paused, idly putting his holographic hair into a topknot and trying to ignore the sense of Don's argument. "I guess being Japanese is cool."

Donnie chuckled. "Mikey, sometimes I think you'll never catch up to your biological age."

Silence fell as Don slipped back into his work and Mike continued to examine his new holographic body. It was slightly taller and leaner than Don's holobody, at his own request; spending his whole life being shorter than the average human male had given him a longing to be lanky, even if it was just a projected image. _I could do book tours, now, and signings! As long as it didn't get back to Leo, or Sensei. Or Raph, but it's so unlikely that he'd ever notice—_

Then without warning the barn door creaked open and Raphael stumbled in, wearing the dangerous look of a sleeper disturbed.

"Hey Don, you ever gonna fix that water heater? It's rattling again, and it's driving me…what the hell?! YAAHHH!"

"OW! Raph, it's me, it's me!"

"Mikey? What the fuck is going on here?"

"Oh, _hell_."


	2. It's Time I Put It All Together

This chapter required a lot of cutting to get rid of (mostly) the Mary Sues. Don't worry--the one that's left will play a minor part for the furtherance of the plot, and then conveniently disappear. :)

Disclaimer: If I owned Michelangelo, he'd be tied up in my closet right now. Wearing a dress. Mmmm.

Chapter 1 – It's Time I Put it All Together

~May 25 – 8:23am~

From: dhamato at dontech dot com

To: amybc at hotmail dot com

Subject: RE: Reference Position

Amy,

Thanks for submitting your resume. I'd like to arrange a phone interview sometime this week to discuss the position further; when would be best for you?

Sincerely,

Don Hamato

~4:23pm~

Donatello looked over the woman's resume once more. A library science student, mid-degree, with good job experience and a good cover letter. _Hopefully she needs a job badly enough to do this, even if I come off a little eccentric…. This is going to be hard._ He sighed, looking around at the unbearable mess his workshop had become, at the collapsing piles of books everywhere, and steeled himself for the conversation he was about to have. _It's a matter of necessity_, he told himself. _I just hope I never have to explain that to Father. Or Leo_.

A little speaker on the wall crackled, and Leo's tired voice suddenly filled the room. "Hey Donnie, can you come up to the house?"

"Sure…" Don replied, guilty and curious.

"And you might want to bring some tools."

~4:36pm~

Six minutes overdue, Amy's cell phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Amy?"

"This is she."

"Hi, this is Don Hamato."

"Oh, hi!"

"Sorry I was late to call, there was a little…family emergency."

"Oh no, I'm sorry…"

"Nothing serious. My brothers broke the electric kettle, and my father wanted his afternoon tea…."

"That sounds pretty serious to me."

"Yes, well. At any rate, I just wanted to let you know what it is I'm looking for."

"Sure."

"I'm trying to start up a company, a tech lab. I need someone to help me out on research questions and whatnot, mostly, but I also need help keeping my little library in order. It's a mess right now and not catalogued at all; I just don't have the time to keep all the texts and manuals organized."

"That sounds great! That's just what I've been doing in my classes."

"Oh, excellent! Pretty much everything is going to be run remotely…I'm starting small, just my own personal lab and some business folks I keep in touch with online. I do all the actual inventing and stuff myself, but it doesn't leave me much free time for the more…"

"Mundane stuff?"

"You caught me. As much as I love books, I don't really love library work. But you do, I can tell."

"I…well…yeah,"

"Then I guess the question is, do you love it enough for a trip out to Worcester? It's on the commuter rail. I'll reimburse you. I'd like to show you around, just so you know what you'll be in for."

"That sounds really great."

"How's Saturday?"

"Tomorrow?"

"Oh…you're right! So it is."

"I work until four-thirty, but I could probably—"

"Oh, that's perfect, actually. Evening is better for me. Why don't you give me a call when you get on the train, and I'll pick you up at the station?"

"Oh! Sure…great!"

"Perfect. I'll see you then."

"Yeah! Thanks very much."

~May 26 – 4:23am~

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Donnie? I mean, Leo's pretty good at figuring out when we're up to something."

Donatello sighed. "Well, Raph, let's see...we're going to fake a phone message using a voice adaptor that I haven't really finished building yet, use the fake message to convince Sensei and Leo to change their retreat plans, then bring a strange human to the farm without their knowledge or consent, all the while wearing experimental hologram generators. No, bro, I'm not sure this is a good idea. But we have to get them out of the house if I'm going to interview a possible employee. If she's good, and she can get the work in the barn done in the two weeks Leo and Sensei will be gone…well, I'll be all set. And we'll have tested the units with an actual person."

"And then you can't keep telling me to wait to go to the comic book store in person!"

Raphael smacked his little brother in the back of the head automatically. "Can it, goofball. We all wanna use the units. Don's right, this test will be just what we need to prove it's safe. That way if Leo ever does find out…maybe we'll get out of it with our shells intact."

~7:05am~

_Seven o'clock in the damn morning. I dunno how the rest of them can get up so damn early. At least Don made some coffee…._ The sleep-deprived turtle leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a brief moment, his hand folded around a mug of coffee as though holding on to consciousness for dear life. Then he heard the bathroom door click shut and he leaned forward a little in his chair, checking the clock with a quick glance. The water started, and Raphael could hear his eldest brother whistling…_is that Oh Susannah? What a cornball._ Without letting go of his coffee, he flipped open his cell and thumbed the speed dial.

Across the house, Mikey hummed to himself as he worked, fingers clicking away at the keyboard. He wasn't really getting anywhere, too tense and expectant waiting for Raph's signal to focus, but he had to make it sound like he was following his usual morning routine. Then the lights on his phone sprang to life and it rang, quietly, just once. _One ring—that's it! Go time!_ He jumped from his chair and thumped downstairs with unusual energy, poking his head into the living room. "Morning, Sensei!"

The rat glanced up at his son's grinning face with a smile of his own. "Good morning, Michelangelo."

The youngest turtle stepped into the room, looping his thumbs through his belt with feigned casualness. "I think I need a little break from the writing this morning…you want some help watering the garden?"

Splinter regarded him from beneath his voluminous eyebrows. "Certainly, my son." He looked over at the clock. "It is just as well that you reminded me; I had lost track of the morning." He took a long draught of tea, draining the cup, then pulled himself to his feet. Mikey tried not to notice that his master leaned more heavily on that old wooden walking stick than he used to.

"How have the new Morning Glories been doing? I haven't been over to the barn in a few days…." Michelangelo flipped open his cell phone behind his back as he ushered Master Splinter out the door, hitting what he hoped was the speed dial for Don. He let it ring for a moment, then flipped the phone closed and tucked it back into his belt as they crossed the lawn toward the barn.

On the other side of the grounds, Donatello fiddled with the voice adaptor, trying to get the tone just right. _It's been a while since I've heard his voice…but it's been at least as long for Sensei and Leo_. The tech turtle jumped, startled, as his phone went off in his belt. _That's gotta be Mikey…. One ring! All right, here goes…_ He strapped the voice adaptor over his mouth, and held out the crumpled note with the message written on it. He dialed the farmhouse number, and listened anxiously to it ring, waiting for the machine to pick it up.

Raphael paced through the kitchen, glaring at the phone. _Come on, Don, let's get this show on the road…if I have to listen to one more round of Oh Susannah, all the ninja skills in the world ain't gonna save Leo's sorry tone-deaf shell._ As if spurred into action by his thoughts, the phone jangled noisily on the wall. He watched it, resisting the urge to answer. _One…two…three…four…._ He sighed in relief as the machine picked up, and a familiar voice came over the speaker. _I gotta hand it to Don, that sounds just like him!_

"Hi guys, it's Kevin! Listen, I know I said that I was going to come and visit three weeks from now, but it looks like that week is a no-go. Can we make it the week before? Hope that's okay—give me a call back and let me know. Talk to you soon."

Raph grinned. The message was perfect; the first part of their plan had gone off without a hitch. He dumped his coffee mug in the sink and turned to make a beeline for his bed—then he turned back, a wicked gleam in his eye, and turned the hot water up full blast to rinse out the mug. He was rewarded a moment later by a shriek that would have done Mikey proud, and an angry bang. "Sorry, Leo!" he shouted through the wall that separated them, grinning all the while, and thumped up the stairs to his room feeling that the morning was getting off to a very good start.


End file.
